Abstract
Use of the word nigger is very often castigated as slurring the referent, but this ignores the context of use. For many people the word itself is a slur no matter what the context, and such people argue for its eradication from the English language. Eradicationists confuse the form of the word with its frequent use as a slur that discredits, slights, smears, stains, besmirches people of black African descent. In this paper I discuss several occurrences of the N word in Quentin Tarantino’s film ‘Pulp Fiction’. At least one is a slur. As with many slurs, in-group usage by people who might themselves have been slurred with the term by out-groupers, nigger is used among African Americans to express camaraderie. Three instances of this are examined. Another instance is where black gangster millionaire Marcellus Wallace, after handing white boxer Butch Coolidge money to go down in the fifth round, tells him ‘You’re my nigger’ to which Butch replies ‘Certainly appears so’. Lastly I consider the tricky situation where a white uses the term nigger to a black friend, not as a term of address and not as a slur either, I argue. I discuss the composition of context and the semantics and connotations of nigger. I examine the place and function of the uses of nigger within the context of the film, ‘Pulp Fiction’, to demonstrate that the affective quality of a linguistic expression should never be judged without taking account of its intended perlocutionary effect within the context in which it is uttered. We see that the basic semantic content invariably contributes to the functional (compositional) meaning, but that pragmatic input from connotations is essential in determining the truth value of the utterance in which nigger appears.
Highlights
Use of the word nigger is very often castigated as slurring the referent, but this ignores the context of use
Context: its composition and importance Context κ is (a) the world spoken of, constituted by the topic of discourse revealed by expression ε’s co-text; (b) if ε is a constituent of utterance υ, such that ε ⊆ υ, κ is the situation in which υ is expressed, which includes what is known about the speaker/writer and the perlocutionary effect of this and similar uses of ε—we might call this situation of utterance ‘the world spoken in’; (c) there is a corresponding situation of interpretation in which the hearer/reader seeks to understand ε ⊆ υ
Many African-Americans have adopted the term nigger, often respelled nigga, to use to or about their fellows (Allan and Burridge 1991, 2006; Asim 2007; Croom 2013; Folb 1980; Kennedy 2000, 2003; McWhorter 2002, 2010; Rahman 2012, inter alios).11. This is a classic example of polysemy and so one cannot say Ordell is a nigger1 and so is Beaumont [a nigger2] because it violates the Q-principle of both Horn (1984) and Levinson (2000), it is perfectly possible for one African-American to say to another That honkey called me a nigger2, nigger1.12 The speaker identifies as a person who has attracted or might attract the slur nigger: in other words s/he trades on the hurtful, contemptuous connotation and subverts it
Summary
Use of the word nigger is very often castigated as slurring the referent, but this ignores the context of use. If it is the speaker/writer’s perlocutionary intention and effect to use nigger in order to disparage the referent in uttering υ, it is a slur.
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